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No-Load Rules Do Not Apply To Telephony Products, Says EPA

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has decided that its Energy Star telephony “no-load” rules do no apply to telephony products such as cordless phones, answering machines, and combination cordless phones and answering machines.

The decision follows a Telecommunications Industry Association (TIA) request that the EPA ensure that an external power supply used in conjunction with Energy Star-qualified telephony products would not be required to meet Energy Star energy consumption requirements of 0.3 or 0.5 W when in standby, or “no-load” mode.

According to the TIA, the new EPA requirements did not account for the fact that cordless phones, answering machines, and combinations of these products are never in standby/no-load mode and were thus inapplicable and irrelevant for these products.

Looking at the bigger picture, the TIA says the cost of compliance of European Union environmental regulations (RoHS, REACH, etc.) is estimated to be nearly a trillion dollars across the electronics industry globally. The cost of noncompliance could be in the millions—mostly from fines that the EU assigns to noncompliant companies.

As a result, the TIA says it plans to invest in a number of green initiatives for the electronics industry worldwide. These include EIATRACK, the association’s global benchmark for environmental intelligence and product-oriented regulatory tracking and analysis, and the TIA’s e-cycling Central Web site (http://www.eiae.org/), with a new database of more than 2000 electronics recycling locations in the United States.